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2004 



400187 








































! 

Ti 




Count Albert Apponyi 


REVIVAL OF MAGYAR 
PROPAGANDA 
IN AMERICA 



COMPILED BY THE 

ASSOCIATION OF SLOVAK NEWSPAPERMEN 

OF AMERICA 
1923 












FOREWORD 

URING the world war and ever since, this country 
has been deluged by a flood of propaganda, 
each having as its aim the diversion of American 
public opinion from the real issues, underlying 
the conflicts in Europe, and each conducted with 
more or less skill, but with the one obvious 
tendency—that whatever truths were involved, should be 
capitalized for the benefit of the cause of the propagandists, 
whatever mistatements, should be minimized for the same 
purpose. The American Press, with a few rare exceptions, 
did not fall an easy victim to these wilful misrepresentations, 
and with exceptional impartiality recorded the events as 
brought to its attention, often without comment, but never 
contrary to its customary policy of fair play. 

At a time when a renewal of propaganda in behalf of 
Hungary, or better said, the feudal, aristocratic interests of 
one class of Hungarian national life, with medieval ideas 
under the cloak of modern phraseology, makes its appear¬ 
ance in this country, we deem it our duty to speak to our 
colleagues of the American Press and other representatives 
of public life, in a man to man talk and with the flaming 
torch, the emblem and symbol of journalism, in our hand to 
throw proper light upon a subject which is continuously 
forced upon the American public. 

The attitude of Hungary during the war is well known. 
American correspondents, undefiled by continental propa¬ 
ganda, took care that there be no misconception on that 
part. The attitude of the Hungarian, or Magyar governments, 
after the armistice and up to the signing of the Treaty of 
Trianon, is also known. But it is not known in this country 
that behind all propaganda moves on the part of Hungary— 
the State of the Magyars—stands a group of some eighty 
feudal, aristocratic families, who at all times have affiliated 

5 














themselves with any form of government which guaranteed 
them political supremacy and economic privileges. That is 
the reason why Hungary has tottered from conservatism to 
radical socialism, and from bolshevism to the autocratic 
rule of its present regent who is keeping the road open for 
an eventual return of monarchic rule in Hungary. That is 
the reason why, under the guise of appeals to foreign 
countries, but particularly to the legislative bodies of the 
United States, and to its chief executive, the president, the 
representatives of this feudal, aristocratic group are seeking 
financial aid, for the sole purpose of destroying the fruits 
of the struggle of the liberated national minorities of former 
Hungary. 

For this purpose Count Teleki lectured last year at 
Williams College, Williamsport, N. Y. For the same purpose 
Count Apponyi undertook this year to visit the United 
States, and while lecturing at the New York Political Insti¬ 
tute, at the same time make an attempt to raise a loan for 
Hungary which would be sufficiently large to assist the 
Hapsburgs to regain the throne of Hungary, and gradually 
bring about a complete return to those conditions which 
existed before the outbreak of the war, and which fully 
were responsible for it. 

Who is Count Apponyi? Count Albert George Apponyi 
was born in 1846 in Vienna, his family being ardent sup¬ 
porters of the ruling family, the Hapsburgs. It was there 
that he attended the secondary schools, being educated by 
the Jesuits. He later in 1867, took up the study of law, and 
finally left for Budapest where he completed his studies in 
1 868. For the next two years he traveled through Germany 
and France, studying political and economic conditions. His 
debut in politics occurred in 1872 when Baron Sennyei, 
leader of a mild opposition party, secured his election as 
deputy into the Magyar parliament. At that time he prom¬ 
ised the national minorities of Hungary certain alleviations 
with regard to the then already prevailing policy of Magyar- 
ization. 

He later affiliated himself with the party of Deak, but 
in 1 886, following a split of that party, a fusion was brought 


6 


about between Deak and Coloman Tisza, who became the 
leaders of the so-called liberal party. Sennyei’s opposition 
to the policies of Tisza finally brought out Apponyi as the 
leader of the mild opposition party. Prior to that, how¬ 
ever, Apponyi made himself conspicuous by his ardent 
advocacy of a customs union with Germany, in which the 
“Most favored nation’s clause’’ played an important part. 
It was at that time that Austria began to further Bismark’s 
‘Drang nach Osten’ idea and entered a secret pact with 
Germany. 

At that time we find Apponyi opposed to raising the 
strength of the standing army of Austria-Hungary, and 
uniting with Kossuth’s opposition in favor of a complete 
separation of Hungary from Austria. The street demon¬ 
strations which he himself conducted were to some degree 
successful. But a year later he again joined the club of 
deputies of the government party, saddling from one issue 
to another. 

In 1 896 he became Minister of Education and while in 
this capacity had laws enacted according to which all public 
grade schools of the national minorities were compelled to 
instruct their pupils 23 hours per week in the Magyar 
language. One can easily imagine how little time was left 
for instruction in the mother tongue of the pupils, although 
this right had been guaranteed by a Law of the Nationalities, 

Act Number XL. It was under the aegis of his 

ministry that the most brutal acts on children were committed, 
that they were deprived of the instruction in their mother 
language; that schools maintained by the churches of these 
national minorities were closed; that laws which were on 
the statute books were ignored and only shown to visiting 
strangers as decoy for a non-existing liberalism. 

During the political ascendency of Francis Ferdinand, 
the assassinated heir-apparent of Austria-Hungary, Apponyi 
was forced into the political background. Aware of the 
fact that Austria-Hungary could not long survive on the 
medieval plan on which government business had been 
heretofore conducted, Francis Ferdinand surrounded himself 
with a group of men of education and letters, among W'hom 


7 



Adolph Muller-Gutenbrunn, Dr. Karl Renner—first chan¬ 
cellor of the Austrian Republic—and Professor Philipovitsch 
were the most prominent. Their plan was a confederated 
Austria-Hungary in which the nationalities would secure 
proportional representation in matters affecting their own 
welfare, and all together would look after the common 
interests of the confederated monarchy. Far as this was 
from any ideal democratic arrangement; it Wcis a step for¬ 
ward compared with the political anomaly which Austria- 
Hungary represented, but that went against the grain of the 
Magyar feudal aristocrats. That Francis Ferdinand was not 
popular with them goes without saying, for a proportional 
representation of the national minorities would have deprived 
both the Germans of Austria and the Magyars of Hungary 
of their supremacy over the subjugated races who together 
with them formed the mosaic known as the Austro-Hungar¬ 
ian Monarchy. The assassination at Sarajevo, therefore, 
leads directly back to those whose interests could gain most 
by the elimination of him who stood in the path of their 
future prosperity. That this assassination would lead to 
war the group of nobles of the casino of Budapest knew, 
but that it would lead to the liberation of the subjugated 
races of the former kingdom of Hungary they did not even 
dream of. 

Count Apponyi, after having been in the background 
during the war comes out of his hiding place at the 
moment when the Horthy regime renews its policy of 
swashbuckling, and again threatens the equilibrium of Central 
Europe by veiled efforts of restoration to the throne of 
Hungary of the Hapsburgs, the same Hapsburgs who to¬ 
gether with the nobility of Hungary are primarily responsible 
for the outbreak of the world war. And with this mission in 
his mind Apponyi comes before the American public with 
an appeal for financial aid—to restore Hungary to its 
former glory. 

The pamphlet, to which this introduction forms an 
integral part, is dedicated to our colleagues, the American 
newspapermen, and to our American men of affairs for the 
purpose of information. We would not have resorted to 


8 


this step had not the incessant stream of propaganda com¬ 
pelled us to show the propagandists in the proper light. 
Effort after effort has been made to mislead American 
public opinion. Political sentiment, religious sentiment, 
economic sentiment, all have been called to the aid of a 
cause which would have for its ultimate aim the enslavement 
of over twelve million non-Magyar peoples now incorpor¬ 
ated in sovereign States in which their own racial kin predom¬ 
inate. This pamphlet is a reply to a petition presented to 
Congress by Senator Robert La Follette at the behest of a 
Cleveland delegation of Magyars. We do not fear its 
effectiveness. But, as we have explained, we could not 
afford to leave it unchallenged. Hence we are turning to 
our colleagues of the American Press and our American 
fellow citizens in public life and submit our brief to their 
fair and impartial judgment. 

THE ASSOCIATION OF SLOVAK 
NEWSPAPERMEN OF AMERICA. 



Secretary. 






THE REVIVAL OF THE MAGYAR 

PROPAGANDA 


RIOR to 1914 the word propaganda had quite 
an innocent meaning. It meant dissemination of 
any doctrine. The war changed that meaning. 
Propaganda, since then, has become synonymous 
with the dissemination of colored, garbled news, 
with distortion of facts, for the sole benefit of the 
disseminating party. It is equivalent to playing with loaded 
dice, or having a supplementary ace up the sleeve. We have 
had in this country all kinds of propaganda. Pro-German pro¬ 
paganda; propaganda in behalf of the Allies; pacifist propa¬ 
ganda; propaganda of anarchy, and among others too 
numerous to mention, Magyar propaganda. 

Magyar propaganda? What in the world do the 
Magyars want of the United States? What does Hungary 
expect the United States to do, or to believe? It is not 
quite nine years ago when a spark in the powder barrel of 
European politics gave rise to a conflagration which blazed 
its fiery tongues even to the shores of this country and 
resulted in the conscription of three millions of American 
youths, and their transportation across the sea. It is not 
necessary to recall how the war started. That is still fresh 
in the memory of every newspaper reader. But something 
might have escaped the readers attention, namely the fact 
that former Austria-Hungary actually had started the war, 
and that Hungary’s Premier Count Tisza actually had pushed 
the hand of Austrian diplomacy to send Serbia an ultimatum 
which was of such a nature as to bar any amicable settle¬ 
ment of the existing issue. 

What followed this ultimatum, and the eventual de¬ 
claration of war on Serbia is now a matter of history, and 
the outcome of the war is too well known as to necessitate 
repetition of well known facts. What matters here is to 












ascertain beyond doubt that Hungary had an equal share of 
guilt, if not the lion’s share, in the cause of the war, and 
that the subsequent partition of Hungary was not so much 
the result of her loss of the war as it Wcis the working out of 
a trend of developments, in which the former non-Magyar 
nationalities carried out their centrifugal tendencies, by each 
joining their own tribal kin and thus escaping an ignominious 
death by absorption into an inferior body. Twelve millions 
of white non-Magyars escaped the fate of forcible assimila¬ 
tion with a nation whose Ugro-Turanian origin is undisputed. 
Twelve millions of Serbs, Croats, Rumanians and Slovaks 
resisted successfully their mongolization. The outcome of 
the war left these non-Magyars citizens and subjects of 
states in which their own racial kin is predominant, if not 
exclusive, and their existence as nations was saved. 

In facing the claims of the Magyars, or Hungarians— 
as they like to be called outside of their own country—it 
is necessary to go somewhat back in history, say a little over 
a thousand years. In 865 A. D. the Magyars first appeared 
in Europe, in the place where they are presently situated. 
We can dismiss the claims of their overzealous historians 
who attempt to trace the founding of the Magyar state to 
one Arpad who came and conquered Hungary or rather 
Panonia and destroyed the Greater Moravian Empire. We 
can dismiss this claim because it is rejected by most of their 
men of intellect, among whom Armin Vambery is not one 
of the meanest. At the time when the Magyars appeared, 
not as they claim by way of the Carpathian passes, but by 
way of the banks of the Danube, they had been driven 
away from the Caspian, and later from the Black Sea by 
another marauding tribe of nomads—long since extinct— 
the Pechenegs. The Magyars themselves were nomads, and 
their sweeping down upon the open, unprotected land, 
occupied by the Panonian Slavs, resulted in the recess of the 
latter into the more secure, mountainous regions, into that 
which always was and now still is Slovakia. But even at 
that time the Magyars were not numerically strong enough, 
nor did they have other necessary qualiifications to found a 
political state. That political state is the result of later 


12 


development, in cooperation with the neighboring tribes, 
mostly Slavs, and that which is today so proudly shown as 
the result of Magyar statecraft is nothing but the old Slav 
system of county government, enlarged and adopted to the 
western ideas of statecraft. 

The invasion of the Magyars is graphically described 
in Gibbon’s “Rome” and knowing his authority we are 
satisfied with his version. It may suffice here to say that the 
idea of the Magyar state, such as we know it in the last 
part of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth 
century, is comparatively new. At any rate it is not older 
than the end of the eighteenth centry,—the Great French 
Revolution. 

To understand Hungary, her development, her treat¬ 
ment of the nationalities which together with the Magyars 
formed the Kingdom of Hungary, her part in the world 
war and her present effort to upset the results of a bloody 
struggle of nationalities for independence, accompanied by 
their enormous sacrifices, it is necessary to understand one 
element in the body of the former and even present state of 
Hungary. That element is feudalism. 

The American, who is free-born and whose thirteen 
colonies and subsequent forty-eight states never knew 
feudalism will find this problem difficult to understand. As 
a student of the history of England, France or Germany he 
may have an idea what feudalism is in general. Magyar 
feudalism is all that, only worse. England had to go through 
the disturbances of the conflicts between the barons and their 
king, culminating in the signing of the Magna Charta at 
Runnymede. She had to go through the war of the Roses, 
through the signing of the Bill of Rights before representa¬ 
tive government was established. France had to go through 
her Great Revolution before the feudal rights of France’s 
aristocracy were abolished. Germany had to go through 
her peasant wars and the final decay of the orders of 
German nobility. Hungary was the only country which 
was governed to the day of the signing of the armistice for 
the sole benefit of a few titled families, and she is governed 

13 


in that way unto the present day. Any appeal on the part 
of Hungary for a change or modification of the Treaty of 
Trianon is a plea for the restoration of the privileges of 
these feudal aristocrats to the detriment of peoples who 
fought for their freedom and won it. That the United States, 
always a champion of liberty, should permit itself to be 
used by a scheming clique of feudal aristocrats is incon¬ 
ceivable. That any incentive should go out from the United 
States, ostensibly pledged to non-interference in European 
politics, seems to be out of the question. Nevertheless, it 
will not be amiss to scrutinize the claims of the Magyars 
and establish their value in the light of truth. 


14 


11 . 


Ever since the armistice Magyar propaganda bureaus 
tried to present the case of Hungary in such a light as to 
make the Magyars appear to be victims of circumstances. 
Unfortunately these apologists seem to overlook that their 
every claim is being checked up and compared with facts. 
The Magyar propagandists try vainly to place Hungary in 
a position of a country which had no choice but to accept 
a war which had been forced upon her. That is not true. 
The truth is that Hungary was anxious to destroy Serbia, 
and the Sarajevo incident was only a pretense to carry out 
a plan of the Austro-Hungarian militarists, a plan which 
they had contemplated since 1908, on the occasion of the 
annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina. The best argument, 
however, and at the same time the best proof for the false¬ 
hood of this claim can be found in the words of Count 
Andrassy, former minister of foreign relations, who wrote 
in the “Revue Politique Internationale,” and in “Revue de 
Hongrie,” “There are not, in Europe, two peoples of race 
and traditions whose community of interest is so evident and 
has taken so visible a form in the facts of the history as the 
Germans and the Magyars; and Germany could not have 
a more sure ally than Hungary, if she is willing to trust us. 
Today’s Germany is nowhere more admired than among 
us. Our sympathies for Germany have grown keener during 
the war, and today to the sentimentality of admiration 
which we feel toward the German people are added the 
glorious (?) and tragic memories of bloodshed and fights 
fought in common. And the more this people (the Germans) 
become the object of hatred and calumny, the more we 
(the Magyars) shall love it, because we are well aware 
that most of the accusations thrown in its face are prompted 
by envy and jealousy . . . .” We do not believe comment 
is necessary in connection with any further claim on the 
part of Hungary as a victim of circumstances. We have 
quoted Count Andrassy’s own words, feeling that none of 
our accusations could carry the weight of his own admission. 

Shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon a 
renewed propaganda drive was launched in this country. 


15 


On the one side inspired stories in a popular American 
weekly from the pen of the consort of a former diplomat, 
on the other hand a series of advertisements in the metro¬ 
politan press, accompanied by sob stories in denominational 
papers preceded an attempt to enlist the sympathies of 
the United States Senate. A committee of Magyars appeared 
before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U. S. 
Senate, and submitted a brief, rather a pamphlet, in which 
were enumerated all the reasons why the United States 
should exert its good services, and compel twelve millions 
of non-Magyars, and we repeat here—white non-Magyars— 
to return into their former status of slavery, in other words 
into the same conditions against which they had risen in 
revolt and into which they would now be compelled to re¬ 
turn after having won their revolution and their fight for 
freedom, and their former oppressors, totally defeated at 
home and abroad, would have only to ask the United States 
to order these people back into their old yokes and they 
would voluntarily return. That was one of the wildest 
guesses that this committee could have ever made. 

We attended that hearing in which the claims of Hun¬ 
gary were presented, and enjoyed the courtesy of the 
Committee on Foreign Relations in also having a hearing 
granted us, at which we presented briefs, showing the 
incongruity of the Magyar claims. These briefs form now 
a part of the peace negotiations of the U. S. Senate pro¬ 
ceedings. So far as we know no further action was taken 
in behalf of the Magyars, as this country was just talked 
to death with propaganda and nothing was as objectionable 
to an American politician as to talk European intervention 
to him. One year after that hearing the Republican party 
walked into power on a policy of non-intervention. We 
were strong advocates of that policy. We believed then, 
and still believe now, that this country has enough problems - 
of its own as to engage itself in the restoration to power of 
a few families of feudal nobles over the God-given rights 
of those peoples who had fought so valiantly to free them¬ 
selves from their oppressors. 


16 


In the meantime that propaganda which had bungled 
so hopelessly in its coarse efforts to deceive American 
public opinion changed front and began to invade our seats 
of knowledge. Count Paul Teleki, former Prime Minister 
of Hungary, delivered a series of lectures at the Political 
Institute of Williams College, of Williamstown, N. Y., 
which recently appeared in a volume published by MacMillan. 
We cannot go into detail with regard to this book, but we 
cannot deny ourselves our opinions which we obtained after 
careful perusal and comparisons of facts as presented and 
as actually found. The book is the subtlest fraud ever 
perpetrated on an unsuspecting circle of readers, because its 
author travels in the aura of a savant, a geographer of repute. 
The fact that he is acquainted with the geography of the 
land is by no means a guarantee of his treatment of the 
subject which involves ethnic, historic and human principles, 
with that honesty which it requires in order to be properly 
presented. The book is a repetition of the claim that because 
all the waters are running down from Slovakia to the 
Hungarian plains the country of the former ought to be 
exploited by the latter. Today we are only trying to show 
that the problems affecting the Magyars must be handled 
with great care because of the lack of honesty, sincerity and 
truthfulness with which they are presented by them. We 
would consider the issue closed, were it not for the renewed 
effort of organization after organization to bring it again 
on the floor of the United States Senate, as if all that were 
necessary for the U. S. Senate to do would be to decree 
these people back under the power of the Magyar overlords. 
It does not seem to occur to any one that these nations who 
had fought with the Allies against great odds, and who 
had thrown in their lot with the Allies at the beginning of 
the war, would rather die to the last man, with their backs 
against the wall, than again return from whence they had 
liberated themselves with such a heavy toll in sacrifices. 

Just now there is another attempt under foot, to tinker 
with the provisions of the Treaty of Trianon. A delegation 
of Cleveland Magyars is reported to have submitted to 
Senator La Toilette a memorandum in which they ask for 


a revision of the Treaty of Trianon. Senator La Follette 
accepted the memorandum, had it printed and distributed 
among the members of the U. S. Senate. According to that 
memorandum the war was not caused by Austria-Hungary 
or Germany, but by the International bankers, and there 
will be no peace in Europe before Hungary will be restored 
to her former territorial and economic rights. 


Itt 


III. 


We have before us a pamphlet, marked Senate Docu¬ 
ment No. 346, of the 67th Congress, 4th Session, entitled 
“Justice for Hungary,” presented by Senator La Follette, 
March 3rd 1923, ordered to be printed with illustrations. 
It is a petition submitted by the Executive Committee of 
Arrangement, National Conventions of American citizens of 
Hungarian descent to the Congress of the United States 
relative to a plea for justice for Hungary and peace for 
Europe. 

« 

Before going any further we wish to set down an old 
legal proposition. He who goes into court to seek redress 
for alleged wrongs must come with clean hands. Did the 
petitioners come with clean hands? Are they telling the 
whole, untarnished truth, and does the weight of the evidence 
preponderate on their side? We say emphatically, no! 

Were we at liberty to dispose of this petition, we 
would do it on the same grounds on which Bismarck once 
characterized one of his contemporaries—that he was a man 
of a vast and varied store of misinformation, the only 
difference being in our case that these misinformations, 
submitted by the petitioners, are willful, calculated to mislead, 
intended to create undeserved sympathy, and based on the 
assumption that America, unfamiliar with the issue between 
some twelve millions of white non-Magyars, and some 
eighty families of feudal aristocrats admittedly members 
of a nation whose Mongolian origin can not be denied, can 
be easier mislead on account of that unfamiliarity. 

The petition begins with a quotation from one of 
President Harding’s speeches, and we are re-quoting it here 
as we shall have use for it later on in support of our own 
arguments. “How can humanity justify or God forgive? 
Human hate demands no such toll; ambition and greed 
must be denied it. If misunderstanding must take the blame, 
then let us banish it, and let understanding rule and good¬ 
will regnant everywhere. All of us demand liberty and 
justice. There cannot be one without the other, and they 


19 


must be held the unquestioned possession of all peoples. 
Inherent rights are of God, and the tragedies of the world 
originate in their denial. The world today is infringing 
their enjoyment by arming to defend or deny, when simple 
sanity calls for their recognition through common under¬ 
standing.”— (President Harding.) 

The preceding quotation would lead to the belief that 
President Harding said this in connection with the dismem- ‘ 
berment of Hungary. That, at least, is the impression which 
it intends to convey. As a matter of fact he did not do 
anything of the sort. The, intentions of the petitioners are 
obvious. They are quoting the president like the devil 
quotes Scripture, using all that is favorable to them, and 
omitting all that is unfavorable. The ideas, expressed in 
the above quotation, are lofty and bespeak the high idealism 
of our late chief executive, but in the hands of the petitioners 
they become a mockery, for the true history of Hungary 
shows that she violated every human right in the past and 
this petition is only a plea for permission to continue therein. 
The United States, pledged to a policy of non-interference in 
European matters, cannot consistently interfere. But since 
this petition is a plea to the President, to Congress, and 
to Christian America, and since, farther down in their 
petition, (on pg. 24) they claim that the delegates of the 
Peace Conference were so woefully ignorant “with re¬ 
ference to the territory of Hungary,” and since, furthermore, 
the general American public—barring singular exceptions— 
cannot be more enlightened as to who the Magyars, or 
Hungarians, are, we are pressing into service the eminent 
historian. Gibbon, and quote, by way of an introduction, 
from Chapter LV, of his remarkable “Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire.” 

“When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung 
over Europe, about 900 years after the Christian era, 
they were mistaken by fear and superstition for the 
Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs and fore¬ 
runners of the end of the world. Since the introduction 
of letters they have explored their own antiquities with 
a strong and laudable impulse of patriotic curiosity. 


20 


Their rational criticism can no longer be amused with 
a vain pedigree of Attila and the Huns, but they com¬ 
plain that their primitive records have perished in the 
Tartar war, the truth of the fiction of their rustic songs 
is long since forgotten; and that the fragment of a 
rule chronicle must be painfully reconciled with the 
temporary though foreign intelligence of the imperial 
geographer. Magyar is the national and Oriental deno¬ 
mination of the Hungarians; but among the tribes of 
Scythia, they are distinguished by the Greeks under the 
proper and peculiar name of Turks, as the descendants 
of that mighty people who had conquered and reigned 
from China to the Volga. 

“Except the merit and fame of military prowess, 
all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and con¬ 
temptible to these Barbarians, whose native fierceness 
was stimulated by the consciousness of numbers and 
freedom. The tents of the Hungarians were of leather, 
their garments of fur; they shaved their hair and 
scarified their faces; in speech they were slow, in action 
prompt, in treaty perfidious, and they shared the com¬ 
mon reproach of the Barbarians, too ignorant to 
conceive the importance of truth, too proud to deny 
or palliate the breach of their most solemn engagements. 
Their simplicity has been praised; yet they abstained 
only from the luxury they had never known; whatever 
they saw they coveted; their desires were insatiate, and 
their sole industry was the hand of violence and rapine. 
In the abuse of victory they astonished Europe, yet 
gjj^arting from the wounds of the Saracen and the 
Dane; mercy they rarely asked and more rarely be¬ 
stowed; both sexes were accused as equally inaccessible 
to pity, and their appetite for raw flesh might counte¬ 
nance the popular tale, that they drank the blood and 
feasted on the hearts of the slain. 

“After a long pilgrimage of fight or victory, the 
Turkish hordes approached the common limits of the 
French and Byzantine empires. Their first conquest and 
final settlement extended on either side of the Danube 


21 



above Vienna, below Belgrade, and beyond the measure 
of the Roman province of Panonnia, or the modern 
kingdom of Hungary. That ample and fertile land 
was loosely occupied by the Moravians, a Slavonian 
name and tribe which were driven by the invaders into 
the compass of a narrow province. Charlemagne had 
stretched a vague and nominal empire as far as the 
edge of Transylvania; but, after the failure of his legi¬ 
timate line, the dukes of Moravia forgot their obedience 
and tribute to the monarchs of Oriental France. The 
bastard Arnulf was provoked to invite the arms of the 
Turks. They rushed through the real or figurative wall 
which his indiscretion had thrown open; and the king 
of Germany has been justly reproached as a traitor to 
the civil and ecclesiastical society of the Christians. 
During the life of Arnulf the Hungarians were checked 
by gratitude or fear; but the infancy of his son Louis 
they discovered and invaded Bavaria; and such was 
their Scythian speed, that in a single day a circuit of 
fifty miles was stripped and consumed. In the battle 
of Augsburg the Christians maintained their advantage 
till the seventh hour of the day, they were deceived 
and vanquished by the flying strategems of the Turkish 
cavalry. The conflagration spread over the provinces 
of Bavaria, Swabia and Franconia; and the Hungarians 
promoted the reign of anarchy by forcing the stoutest 
barons to discipline their vassals and fortify their 
castles. The origin of walled towns is ascribed to this 
calamitous period; nor could any distance be secured 
against an enemy, who, almost at the same instant, laid 
in ashes the Helvetian monastery of St. Gall, and the 
city of Bremen, on the shores of the Northern Ocean. 
For about thirty years the Germanic empire or kingdom 
was subject to the ignominy or tribute; and resistance 
was disarmed by the menace, the serious and effective 
menace, of the dragging of women and children into 
captivity, and the slaughtering of the males above the 
age of ten years. 1 have neither power nor inclination 
to follow the Hungarians beyond the Rhine; but 1 
must observe with surprise, that the southern provinces 


22 


of France were blasted with the tempest and that Spain, 
behind her Pyrenees, was astonished at the approach 
of these formidable strangers. The vicinity of Italy had 
tempted their early inroads; but from their camp on 
the Brenta they beheld with some terror the apparent 
strength and populousness of the newly discovered 
country. They requested leave to retire; their request 
was proudly rejected and the lives of 20,000 Christians 
paid the forfeit of this obstinacy and rashness. Among 
the cities of the West, the Royal Pavia was conspicuous 
in fame and splendor; and the pre-eminence of Rome 
itself was derived from the relics of the Apostles. The 
Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in flames; forty-three 
churches were consumed and after a massacre of the 
people they spared about 200 wretches, who gathered 
some bushels of gold and silver, (a vague exaggeration) 
from the smoking ruins of their country. In these annual 
excursions from the Alps to the neighborhood of Rome 
and Capua, the churches, that yet escaped, resounded 
with a fearful litany: ‘O save and deliver us from the 
arrows of the Hungarians.’ 


23 


IV. 


Having thus properly identified the Hungarians by 
means of a source which we doubt they would venture to 
challenge we turn again to the pamphlet proper which opens 
with a summary of the petition in behalf of Hungary. 

“1. Hungary was not responsible for the World 

War. 

2. The responsibility for the World War rests 
upon the shoulders of various groups of international 
financiers. 

3. The territorial mutilation and economic de¬ 
struction of Hungary was done in the furtherance of 
the scheme of a few groups of international financiers 
to obtain absolute control of the international commerce 
and international finance of Europe and Asia, if not 
also of the United States. 

4. There can not be and there will not be peace 
in Europe until Hungary will be restored to her former 
territorial and economic rights. 

5. If the American people and Christian civiliza¬ 
tion will do their duty toward Hungary, she will obtain 
justice and Europe will have peace.” 

it- it- if- 

Were we to stop at this summary and go no farther 
we would find ourselves confronted with statements abso¬ 
lutely contrary to facts, unsubstantiated and contradicted by 
the utterances of prominent exponents of the tenets of 
Magyarism—products of a wild imagination, accompanied 
by threats which sound desperate, (for that is what they 
are intended to *be) but threats which mean exactly the 
opposite of what they purport. 

According to the petitioners “Hungary was not respon¬ 
sible for the World War; the responsibility for the World 
War rests upon the shoulders of various groups of interna¬ 
tional financiers.” Were that true, then the group of “inter- 


24 


national financiers must have been the German financiers 
whose policy of expansion led up to the final conflict, a 
conflict for which Germany prepared since the Franco- 
Prussian War (1870-71) and which finally burst out 
following the premeditated murder of the Austro-Hungarian 
heir-apparent. Who was to blame for this murder? The 
petitioners quote a letter, allegedly originating at the Serbian 
Legation in London, according to which the sums, paid out 
to the assassins, were paid in British currency. They give 
a detailed account which we do not deem of sufficient import 
to repeat. But we wish to stress this: 

The murder was the result of a conspiracy. Conspira¬ 
tors do not employ certified accountants to keep account of 
their expenditures, and the paper, allegedly a letterhead of 
the Serbian Legation in London, is undoubtedly of the same 
parentage as were the bombs which killed Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand, namely, they were stolen and planted as evidence 
in the furtherance of the plot and to impress justification. 
As to the credibility of the witness, the editor of “John 
Bull,” Horace Bottomley, who was sentenced to the peni¬ 
tentiary for frauds committed on British ex-service men, we 
will say that we do not consider his testimony the best 
evidence obtainable, but will quote from the “Austro- 
Hungarian Red Book” (pg. 55): The Tribuna of July 7th 
says: “We are of the opinion that the murderous deed of 
Serajevo was ordered to the end that the extermination of 
the Serbs might be accomplished with one blow.” And in 
the Mali Journal of July 19th occurs the following: “Princip 
was instigated to the attack by an Austro-Hungarian agent. 
In Vienna it is said that the real guilty person could be 
found only in the Austro-Hungarian Embassy at Belgrade.” 
Considering these conflicting statements, we are inclined to 
give credit to those quoted from the Austro-Hungarian 
Red-Book. 

It really is surprising to watch the petitionsr and their 
procedure. They firmly believe that they can come into the 
U. S. Senate and submit any kind of a statement, and no 
questions will be asked. The effort of the Magyars to shake 
their war guilt would be amusing were it not for the fact 

25 


that they are deliberately lying. They disclaim to have had 
any influence on the foreign policy of Austria-Hungary. 
On page viii, in the index of personages listed in the Red 
Book we find the following names: Count Szapary, Austro- 
Hungarian Ambassador in St. Petersburg (Petrograd); 
Count Szecseny, Autsro-Hungarian Ambassador in Paris; 
Count Szbgyeny, Austro-Hungarian Amabassador in Berlin. 
To any thinking person this fact alone will preclude any 
arguments as to influence upon the foreign policy by the 
Magyars. But that policy is much older than a few years 
preceding the World War. Already in 1 848 Kossuth defined 
the Hungarian foreign policy as follows: 

“The Magyar nation is bound to maintain the most 
cordial relations with the free German nation and help it in 
safeguarding Western civilization.” (Independent Bohemia, 
Pg- 13.) 

The value of Hungary for the Pan German plans has 
been expressed by Friedrich Liszt who, in 1862, dreamt of 
a powerful oriental German-Magyar Empire and declared: 

“The way towards the realization of this plan runs 
through Hungary, and while without Hungary we can do 
nothing, with her aid we can do everything. Hungary 
is for Germany the clue to Turkey and the Near East, 
and at the same time a bulwark against a superior 
power from the North.” (Ibid. pg. 16.) 

How strongly Hungarian influence dominated the 
foreign policy of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy can 
be seen from the words of Bismarck who, in 1883 declared: 
“Our political judgment leads us to the conviction that 
German and Magyar interests are inseparable.” (Ibid. pg. 

17 .) 

We desire to quote one more authority, none less than 
former Hungarian Premier Wekerle who, on March 24th, 
1909, on the eve of an expected precipitation of war with 
Serbia declared: “If the maintenance of peace does not prove 
feasible at this time it is best that the poison-tongue of the 
Balkans (meaning Serbia) be pulled out at once. It is by 

26 


i 


no means advisable to wait until the at-present-weakened 
Russia sufficiently regains her powers to take the field against 
ourselves and Germany. It is much more judicious to fight 
at once. (The Inside Story of Austro-German Intrigues pg. 
32.) How silly that talk of international financiers sounds 
when one follows Magyar foreign policy from epoch to epoch. 

Such was the mental attitude of all the Hungarian 
political factors; not shortly before the war, but running 
back at least seventy-five years. That is not accidental. 
That was fostered and pampered. It was in line with Premier 
Beust’s admonition, both to the Germans of Austria and 
to the Magyars of Hungary, at the time of the political 
settlement (Ausgleich) in 1867: “You will take care of 
your hordes from Vienna (to the Germans), and you will 
take care of yours from Budapest (to the Magyars).” The 
“hordes” were the Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. 

Whoever can doubt the war guilt of the Magyars today 
is either lacking proper political judgment, or proper infor¬ 
mation. The truth cannot be expected from Magyar sources. 
It is for that reason that we give preference to quoting their 
own authorities, wherever available, rather than those of 
other nations. 


27 


V. 


In their efforts to arouse the sympathies of the United 
States, the petitioners resort to arguments which are not 
very fortunately chosen. Among them is part of an article 
of Lloyd George, published in the Cleveland Press, January 
6th, 1923. It reads: “No one ever believed it—(the cause 
of the war)—was the assassination of the royal archduke 
(of Austria). Were it not that the German Army was more 
perfect and more potent than either the French or Russian 
Army, were it not that every German officer was convinced 
that the German military machine was superior to all its 
rivals, there would have been no war, whatever emperors, 
diplomatists, or statesmen said, thought or intended.” 

That is not a revelation. It is only a repetition of our 
claims since the outbreak of the war to which, however, 
must be added, that since the emperors were the supreme 
commanders of the armies of their respective countries, 
that any and all war schemes, if not hatched by them alone, 
must have been within reach of their knowledge, and that 
this last war was carefully prepared and planned can not 
be doubted by any one who read “The Inside Story of 
Austro-German Intrigues,” by Dr. Joseph Goricar and 
Lyman Beecher Stowe, published by Doubleday, Page and 
Company. 

No well informed American can be influenced to 
believe that any one but the exponents of the Central Powers 
are to be held accountable for the precipitation of the war. 
Today, almost nine years after the declaration of war, and 
almost five years after its termination, we refer to the intro¬ 
duction of the above mentioned book, written by Professor 
Albert Bushnell Hart, who says: “From month to month the 
tide of materials rises till mankind is at last able to pillory 
the sovereigns, the leading statesmen, and military chiefs 
of Germany and Austria-Hungary, as the authors of this 
terrific world woe and the unscrupulous engineers who, for 
the salvation of mankind, were at last ‘hoist with their own 
petard’!” 


28 


Xhere is an effort in the petition, to cast suspicion 
upon the Triple Entente, England, France and Russia for 
the Sarajevo murder. That is ridiculous. The bloody tracks 
lead from the Sarajevo tragedy directly into the Casino 
of the Nobles of Budapest. It is there where Austria’s 
policies of Foreign relations were being shaped. It is there 
where the murderous plan was hatched. It is from the same 
place that the present propaganda drive, manifested by 
this petition, is directed. Ostensibly a plea of American 
citizens of Hungarian descent, this petition is a plea of the 
Casino of the Nobles for a renewal of their lease to exploit 
the non-Magyar white Slav races, formerly parts of Hungary, 
but now free by the will of their determination and con¬ 
secrated by the blood shed in this effort which ultimately 
succeeded. 

But the war guilt of a nation is not established by the 
mere protestations of innocence of the caught culprit. It is 
established and ascertained by the psychology of this nation 
when caught in the whirl of a war agitation. The demeanor 
of this nation, so caught, is a more reliable testimony 
than all the quotations from works of this world, or any 
other world. What was the attitude of the Germans of 
Austria, and the Magyars of Hungary, on the day war was 
declared on Serbia? What was the meaning of the howling 
mobs in the streets of Vienna, Budapest, and other Austrian 
and Hungarian cities? How does their frenzied attitude com¬ 
pare with the deadly, sinister silence in Bohemia and Slo¬ 
vakia? And we state in this place that the silence of the 
Bohemians (Czechs) and the Slovaks found later expression 
in the desertions of the Slav troops from the bodies of the 
Austro-Hungarian armies, and that the disrupture of the 
monarchy must be placed to the credit of these Czech and 
Slovak soldiers who were the first to break the backbone of 
the Austro-Hungarian effort of wiping out Serbia. That, 
and the attitude of the people at home, in Bohemia and 
Slovakia, is responsible for the downfall of the monarchy, 
which would have survived but for that disintegrating factor. 
If the petitioners for Hungary now desire to convey the 
impression that they were dragged into the war against 
their will, then let them produce their newspapers of that 


29 


period. They will speak more eloquently against them than 
could any outside authority which we could press in service. 

Speaking of the purposes of what they call the mutilation 
of Hungary, they try to convey the impression that Hun¬ 
gary as a unit was a happy family, that all the races living 
within the confines of the kingdom of Hungary were justly 
treated, and that nothing was farther from them than 
separation from the main body. They strongly dwell on 
the fact that Hungary was a geographical unit; that all the 
waters ran down into the Hungarian plain; that the various 
parts were economically interdependent, etc. We do not 
care whether it was or not. Slovakia proper, or what the 
Magyars used to call Northern or Upper Hungary, was an 
ethnical unit for over a thousand years, and all the force 
exerted by the Magyars to denationalize the Slovaks had 
failed. This area is occupied, according to the admission of 
Count Appohyi, one of the exponents of Magyar Feudalism, 
by seventy-six percent (76%) of Slovaks who decided of 
their own free will and accord to join their racial brethren, 
the Czechs of Bohemia, and form together with them, the 
Czecho-Slovak Republic whose government had been recog¬ 
nized, even before the armistice, by the governments of the 
countries engaged in war against the Central Powers. That 
de facto recognition was strengthened when on the days of 
October 28th to October 30th, 1918, the Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy collapsed, and out of her ruins emerged four new 
states. We have no objections to Hungary governing her 
own people, but we do object even to the insinuation of a 
possibility to force these white, non-Magyar peoples back into 
a condition of servitude, which could find its equal only in 
the dark periods of the Middle Age and which had prevailed 
in Hungary, in this alleged land of culture and chivalry, 
unto the days of the termination of the war. 

We have laid particular stress on the word “White” 
when speaking of the Slavs of Hungary as against the 
Magyars. The Magyars are admittedly of Ugro-Turanian 
origin. The Slavs belong to the oldest of Aryan tribes. If 
there is so much sympathy displayed in the case of the 
Armenians, who suffered under the Turk, then we have a 


30 


much stronger claim for the Slavs at least being left alone, 
and not being meddled with for the benefit of a few feudal, 
aristocratic families, who are only whining because they 
can no longer exploit those who were to them sources of 
wealth and power. If six millions of Magyars threaten the 
world that there will be no peace unless they be permitted 
to exploit and absorb some twelve millions of non-Magyar 
Slavs, then we can foretell with equal certainty and with 
more accuracy that any attempt to alter the status quo of 
these liberated peoples will re-ignite the flames of war. 


31 


VI. 


The general intent of the petition is to convey the im¬ 
pression that Hungary was wronged by the terms of the 
treaty of Trianon, and that the logical thing would be to 
stir up enough resentment and indignation in the United 
States, as to affect a reversion of the treaty and a restora¬ 
tion of the original boundaries of former Hungary. Any one 
familiar with the issue will at once arrive at the conclusion 
that this effort is and must be a failure. 

In the first place, matters are not as related by the 
petitioners, but altogether different. In the second place, 
the petition itself emanates from the same source from 
which sprung a recent, not very intelligent, but rather 
malicious attack against Serbia,—from the editorial offices 
of the “Freeman” a publication which every self respecting 
American knows well enough to save us an introduction. 
We do not deem it necessary to waste time on the “Free¬ 
man,” but will turn again to the main object of this pamphlet. 

It matters very little today whether Hungary really 
was a unitary state, or not. It matters very little whether 
as a consequence of the liberation of the non-Magyar nation¬ 
alities Hungary was economically weakened, and finally 
thrown upon her own resources which she will have to 
rebuild and reorganize before she will be able to take her 
place among the producing countries of Europe. But it is 
of very great importance to know that Hungary was a 
polyglot state from its very inception and that the idea of 
a unitary state only began to become acute after the French 
Revolution. Until then the language of Court, and the 
administration of offices was Latin, the nobility of Hungary, 
composed of descendants of adventurers and carpet baggers 
of all nations, was to a large extent ignorant of the Asiatic 
Magyar language which was the tongue of just one branch 
of the rabble. The other nationalities lived rather unmolested 
alongside of the Magyars, for the spark of national con¬ 
sciousness had not yet struck the representatives of political 
Hungary. When, with the French Revolution, the spirit 
of nationalism spread over Europe, it also reached Hun- 


32 


gary. It was about this time that the first demands were 
made of the non-Magyar nationalities to learn the Magyar 
language, or else be excluded from political offices. This 
idea of Magyarization in time assumed a form of insanity. 
The most brutal persecution was the lot of those who dared 
to resist the efforts of the Magyar nobility to create by 
force a unitary nation out of the different races. 

In this effort Magyar political authorities assumed 
a course which made them totally despised with the common, 
non-Magyar people. The invasion of the Magyar language 
in the grade schools of these non-Magyar nationalities; the 
total absence of secondary non-Magyar schools; the lack 
of even a single university for any of these non-Magyar 
nationalities; the interference of the Magyar political author¬ 
ities with the churches of the non-Magyars; their control 
and bribery of the clergymen of the various denominations in 
the services of Magyarization; the persecution of those who 
opposed this policy of forcible denationalization, all these 
facts speak so strongly against a resumption of the old 
conditions, that even were it possible, it would not be 
advisable. But we have already stated that a return to 
pre-war conditions is impossible, for the freedom of these 
non-Magyar peoples is consecrated with the blood of their 
heroic sons. Any attempt to alter this condition of freedom 
for one of slavery would be resisted with the same energy 
with which was thwarted the participation of the Slavs in 
the world war on the side of the Central Powers. 

On pages 26 and 27 of the petition we find a paragraph 
which deserves attention for it follows the same old line 
of buncomb of which the Magyars in the past were such 
masters. “The ethnic situation in Hungary in 1914 was 
similar to that of the United States. During the last few 
centuries, when the Hungarians were decimated by the 
Mongol and Turkish invasions, a good deal of immigration 
was directed into Hungary and thousands of Foreigners 
settled in Hungary.” A little further below they give the 
number of “Slovak settlers” as 1,901,165. 

To compare the situation of America and its immigrant 
problem with that of the Magyars of Hungary requires 


33 


a ipisdirected, though fertile immagination. To begin, the 
Magyars are practically the last of the immigrants in 
Hungary, the Kumans probably excepted who came in 
about the middle of the twelfth century. But these latter 
are the nearest of kin to the Magyars. They too came from 
the shores of the Caspian Sea, and settled in Hungary where 
the original Magyars had greatly diminished in numbers. 
But even this augmentation of their own blood notwith¬ 
standing, the Magyars remained in a lamentable minority, 
though that did not make any difference then. But at the 
time when the Magyars made their first appearance in 
Hungary, there already existed a strongly organized Slav 
state, the Greater Moravian Empire, under Svatopluk (861- 
895). The recession of these Slavs into the mountainous 
regions of the Slovak Highlands accounts for their presence 
in the same location unto the present day. That particular 
territory was never Magyar except in geography. To live 
and prosper in these mountains required hard work. That 
is the very thing the Magyars never learned, and they do not 
know it even now. To speak of these Slavs as immigrants, 
and to compare their status with that of an American immi¬ 
grant, is a wilful falsification of facts, for we do not presume 
that the petitioners were ignorant of them. 

For nearly a thousand years Magyar, Slovak, Serb and 
Rumanian lived together, without one gaining ascendency 
over the other. When at the end of the eighteenth century 
the Magyar nobility embraced the idea of the unitary 
Magyar state, it wrote its own epitaph, whose execution 
came almost one hundred and fifty years later. These 
hundred and fifty years are the black pages of Magyar 
history, for they are the narratives of racial oppression; of 
persecution; of cruelties; of brutality; of thievery and of 
everything that is base and low. Can the United States be 
interested in a scheme which tends to affect a repetition of 
these conditions? We don’t think so. There is nothing in 
the history of the United States which points to a community 
of interests between the people of the United States, and 
the eighty ruling families of Magyar feudal lords in whose 
behalf all this hullabaloo is made. 


34 


VII. 

Nowhere in the petition of the Hungarians is the slight¬ 
est allusion that the former subjugated, and now liberated 
races of Hungary had reasons for their centrifugal tendencies. 
Nowhere is there the slightest intimation that the rights 
of millions of non-Magyars had been trampled under foot. 
Not a word of the unspeakable persecutions of non-Magyars 
for no other crime than that of being faithful to the heritage 
o their ancestors, and for refusing to be merged with a 
nation of Mongolian antecedents, a merger which v/ould 
have cut off two millions of Slovaks from the cultural inter¬ 
course with the great Slav world and have made of them 
so many millions of mutes to whom the gates of the world 
would have been forever shut. 

One must understand the nature of that which is called 
Magyar culture to understand the resistance, for instance, 
on the part of the Slovaks, to become Magyarized. The 
Magyars, as nomads did not bring anything from Asia, 
that would have been worth retaining, after their settle¬ 
ment in the plains of Hungary. They drew heavily on the 
experiences of their immediate neighbors, mostly the Slavs, 
Agriculture as well as metalurgy were strange to them. 
They had had no opportunity to engage in them in their 
wanderings. While they knew how to work the finished 
metal into some ornaments of no particular character they 
only later learned from their neighbors the melting of 
metals. There are at present over a thousand words in the 
Magyar language, denoting articles of agricultural and 
domestic use, which they took from the Slavs. This will 
bear out our statement that they were not a cultural nation 
in the sense we understand culture. There are however, 
in the Magyar language, two words which throw considerable 
light upon the mentality of that nation, which claims its 
superiority over its neighbors whom misfortune had com¬ 
pelled to live with them. In the Karolyi translation of the 
Holy Bible, which is considered the official translation, clear 
through the entire text, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, 
woman is spoken of as “aszonyi allat” (the female animal). 
We often wondered at the beastiality of the Magyars in their 


35 


intercourse with the subjugated races. We now have a 
better understanding of it. The sons of “aszonyi allat” 
could be nothing else but beasts. 

In the centuries which followed the appearance of the 
Magyars on the soil of present Hungary, many immigrants 
came to Hungary, encouraged by the kings who desired to 
have the country benefit by the experiences of these stran¬ 
gers. But the Slavs of Hungary, and particularly the 
Slovaks were not among these immigrants. They were 
autochthones. They had always been there, and while they 
may have changed their location, they were always within 
the confines of that country which later became the king¬ 
dom of Hungary. There are, in the museum of Budapest, 
stone molds originally from some of the Slovak castles, 
dating back to neolithic times, which bear ornaments of 
distinctly Slav character. These are not matters of accident. 
They are products of long periods of development, pointing 
to great antiquity of the Slovaks in that location. There are 
sword molds of the bronze age. The advent of the Magyars 
in 895 A. D. makes them indeed very late comers. But 
now come some of their propagandists, and try to slip over, 
in an unguarded moment, the proposition that the Slovaks 
are immigrants of the fifteenth century because in that 
period, during the Hussite wars, several thousand Czech 
refugees found shelter in some of the middle and eastern 
Slovak counties and in course of time merged and assimilated 
with the Slovaks who had harboured them. 

There is so much artificial material crammed into 
Magyar history that Magyar historians of note were com¬ 
pelled to reject it as fables. The most sensible among them 
have tried to reconcile fiction and fact, but the vainglory 
of the Magyar aristocracy, that same aristocracy which 
constitutes the sweepings of the dregs of humanity, would 
permit no other but a very glorious, though utterly fictitious 
history for Hungary. Common sense and cultural history 
were not permitted to cut much of a figure. That is the 
reason why every effort to base the rights, or supposed 
rights of Hungary on historic ground, fell flat. 


36 


Having failed on various occasions to justify their plea 
for restoration to exploit the non-Magyar nationalities on 
grounds of history and economics, the petitioners now 
appeal to Christian America. Christian America is expected 
to exert sufficient pressure to permit in the future yellow, 
Mongolian Magyars to oppress and exploit two millions of 
Slovaks and eight millions of Serbs and Rumanians, entirely 
ignoring the fact that these ten millons of non-Magyars are 
also Christians, and were Christians before the Magyars. 

It is now Christian America which is to change the 
frontiers of thirteen millions of inhabitants of Czecho¬ 
slovakia, eleven millions of Jugoslavia, and thirteen millions 

of Rumania, on the threat that there will be no peace in 

Europe unless the frontiers of Hungary are restored, and the 
millions of non-Magyars are put back into the same slavery 
out of which they freed themselves after a desperate 
fight. That the Little Entente, comprising thirty-seven 
million neighbors of Hungary, is well able to paralyze any 
such threat in less than twenty-four hours, and that Hungary 
would be guilty of suicide if she tried to regain by force 

what she lost as a consequence of the lost war on the side 

of Germany seems to be entirely overlooked. The question 
of peace in Europe need not disturb Christian America. 
There will be peace in Europe when all the affected parties 
will get to work and each try to work out its own salvation. 

Almost all the other countries in Europe, with the 
exception of Hungary, have gone back to work and pro¬ 
duction, and conditions are improving steadily. No one can 
return to them the billions which had been blown into the 
air in the shape of shrapnels, each of which cost a small 
fortune. Austria, with the help of the League of Nations, 
has secured an international loan which will put her back 
in the producing class, and in time her conditions will become 
tolerable. Hungary would do well if she got rid of her 
aristocracy, which has been her curse in the past, and 
which, if symptoms do not deceive us, is preparing for 
Hungary’s final blow. That blow will come if they should 
undertake anything against the present shape of the map of 
central and eastern Europe. They are imprudent enough to 


37 


try, but the Little Entente is not imprudent enough to let 
them get away with it. 

No one who has given the problem any thought 
believes that the salvation of Europe lies in the enslavement 
of ten millions of non-Magyars for the sole gain of Hungary’s 
aristocratic families. We shall try to show what some prom¬ 
inent European writers had to say about the Magyars and 
their treatment of their Slav minorities (though minorities 
only because deprived of their votes by political trickery) 
and what the myth of the liberalism of Kossuth really 
amounted to, together with statements of Magyar writers, 
as to the racial question in Hungary just shortly before the 
war. 


38 


VIII. 


The claim of the petitioners in behalf of Hungary that 
the AVorld AVar had been caused by the ' international 
bankers, is a claim made by the "Freeman,” and parrot¬ 
like repeated by the petitioners. It takes a peculiar aspect 
if confronted with the claim of Count Andrassy, one of the 
most prominent exponents of old time Hungary. While there 
may be some question as to whether the petitioners always 
knew of what they were speaking, or if knowing, whether 
they did not wilfully and with malice aforethought with¬ 
hold the truth, and substitute for it some of their wild 
hallucinations, there can be no doubt that Count Andrassy 
knew of what he was speaking when in one of his speeches 
in December 1917, in the Hungarian parliament he stated: 

“The events of the war have shown that Hungary 
is the surest support of the monarchy while the ten¬ 
dencies of the Czechs are a great danger to the dynasty 
and monarchy We (the Magyars) devoted all our 
powers to the cause of the monarchy and the dynasty, 
and we did this from duty, loyalty, and also egoism. 
Count Szechenyi in 1 848 summoned the nation to sup¬ 
port the dynasty and assure to the Magyars a domi¬ 
nant role. At that time it was impossible because there 
were vital differences between the outlook of the 
dynasty and the Magyar nation, and because the 
dynasty stood for interests in foreign policy with which 
the (Magyar) nation had nothing in common. What 
was then impossible has now happened without Sze¬ 
chenyi, without any great men; the (Magyar) nation 
has itself felt the interests of the dynasty and of the 
nation to be identical, and placed all its forces at the 
service of the throne. 

“The Czechs on the other hand have proved dis¬ 
loyal and part of their troops have joined our enemies 
(the Allies). As there is no Czech army (within the 
monarchy) to enforce their claims they could only 
obtain their claims in one way, by revolution; and to 
admit openly to such a policy is only calculated to 


39 


weaken them and strengthen us (the Magyars). 

Meanwhile from the standpoint of the monarchy as a 
whole it is undoubtedly most harmful that the Slavs 
follow so revolutionary a policy. That can only lead 
to the collapse of Austria. It is our interest that side 
by side with a strong Hungary there should be a 
strong Austria.” 

That does not correspond with the claim of the peti¬ 
tioners, based on the pamphlet published by Carl Streit, 
and broadcasted by the “Freemen.” The statement of 
Count Andrassy is one of fact, emanating from one of the 
typical representatives of feudal Hungary and can be taken 
on its face value, for it shows the true state of affairs and 
the mental attitude of the Magyar nobility in the third 
year of the war. At that time victory for the Central Powers 
still looked like a possibility, and in this mental attitude 
that statement was made. Is there anyone who can be con¬ 
vinced that they were not responsible for the war? How 
foolishly short falls the accusation of the petition that the 
“Czech and Slav advisers” of the emperor were to blame 
for the declaration of the war which spread until its fiery 
tongues licked the shores of this country. The perusal of 
Count Andrassy’s statement ought to be sufficient to dispel 
any doubt were there any existent. But Count Andrassy, 
as if knowing that he would have to controvert lies about 
the real affiliation of Hungary, and her mental attitude, 
moved probably by an act of kind Providence, wrote, both 
in “Revue Politique Internationale,” and in “Revue de 
Hongrie,” an article which definitely settles the question 
whether Hungary was merely a victim of circumstances, 
coerced into a war against her will, and now suffering as 
a consequence of having lost it, or whether Hungary is 
what the whole civilized world, with the probable exception 
of the editorial office of the “Freeman,” knows, and 
which conviction is now difficult to upset. 

“There are not, in Europe,” he writes, “two 
peoples of race and traditions whose community of 
interest is so evident and has taken so visible a form 
in the facts of history as the Germans and the Magyars; 


40 





and Germany could not have a more sure ally than 
Hungary, if she is willing to trust us. Today Germany 
is nowhere more admired than among us. Our sym¬ 
pathies for Germany have grown keener during the 
war, and today to the sentimentality of admiration which 
we feel towards the German people are added the 
glorious (?) and tragic memories of bloodshed and 
fights fought in common. And the more this people 
(the Germans) becomes the object of hatred and 

\ 

calumny, the more we (the Magyars) shall love it, 
because we are well aware that most of the accusations 
thrown in its face are prompted by envy and jealousy.*’ 

One must consider that this statement was written 
when the war was in full swing, and when the situation 
looked very favorable for the Germans; when Northern 
France had been nearly destroyed; when Belgium was 
bleeding out of a thousand wounds, and the whole world 
was shocked by the ferocity and unnecessary cruelty of 
the German troops. Very little was known of the berserker 
rage with which the military camarilla of Hungary acted 
on Serbian territory. And during that period, so full of 
revolting and disgusting incidents, of unnecessary cruelty, 
based on the age old “vae victis,” one of the most pro¬ 
minent exponents of Hungary’s foreign relations Count 
Andrassy sings panegyrics to the Germans. He is courting 
German favor in the hour of victory, as the petitioners are 
now whining for mercy in the hours of subsequent defeat. 
What a wonderful national trait. 

The most political capital the Magyars have ever 
knocked out of any phase of their history, is the exploit¬ 
ation of the “glorious deeds in behalf of freedom,’’ by their 
national hero, Louis ICossuth, a renegade Slovak. Like every¬ 
thing else originating from Magyar sources, this claim de¬ 
serves careful examination. The revolution of 1848 is to 
be considered as the beginning of the modern Magyar 
political state. During that revolution, while fighting for 
freedom of Hungary from the Austrian Hapsburgs, Kossuth 
violently suppressed every attempt at liberty of the other, 
non-Magyar nationalities of Hungary. What with the 

41 


Magyars had become a virtue, became a crime with the non- 
Magyars. From 1 848 until the ending days of October 1918, 
the life of these non-Magyar races in Hungary was one of 
political persecution, oppression, and injustice. 

While Magyar feudalism abroad rang in praises of 
Kossuth and his revolution; while the representatives of 
the Magyar noble families hobnobbed in foreign countries 
with those who make public opinion and assisted in creating 
false, though favorable impressions on Hungary, Nemesis 
reached out her hand and tore the veil off Magyar sham and 
falsehood. Professor R. W. Seton Watson, of the University 
of Edinburgh, and during the war, editor of “New Europe,’* 
desirous to write a comprehensive history of Austria-Hungary, 
decided to study his subject on the spot. In the early years 
of the twentieth century, he visited first Austria, and then 
Hungary. It was his personal contact with the Magyars; 
with their exponents in politics, science, law, journalism and 
other professions, that he slowly, though reluctantly, scrapped 
his former admiration of Kossuth and began to see things 
in a different light. As a result of this personal contact, 
coupled with a stay of three years in the country, upon his 
return to England, he wrote a book which forever will 
remain unsurpassed, and which earned him the compliment 
of one German paper which, doubting his authorship, in¬ 
sinuated: “A traveling Englishman does not acquire such 
knowledge” (ein Englander auf Reisen erwirbt solche 
Kenntnisse nicht). This was an allusion to his nom-de- 
plume “Scotus Viator—a traveling Scotsman.” 


42 


IX. 


The result of the visit in 1 905 to Austria and Hungary 
by Seton Watson was “Racial Problems in Hungary”, one of 
the most masterfully conceived books, published in 1 908 by 
Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd., London. It came as a 
revelation. Unlike other writers, going to foreign countries, 
and falling for either one side or the other side of propa¬ 
gandists, and writing suggested impressions instead of their 
own; forming opinions which to form they neither had 
preparation nor the necessary time; condemning things 
because they had been told by some one, whom some one 
else had told that this ought to be condemned, Seton 
. Watson with that exactness and conscientiousness, acquired 
by his methodical training, set out in quest of a thorough 
understanding of those conditions which at first seemed 
perplexing to him, and full of contradictions. 

“If I were a philosopher,” writes Seton Watson 
in “Raclai Problems in Hungary” (cf pg xvi), “instead 
of a mere student of history, the Magyar psychology 
would supply me with an unique and fascinating 
theme. As it is, I must be content with recounting to 
my readers a few personal anecdotes which illustrate 
the extent to which the Magyars are dominated by 
racial prejudices, and also their extreme disinclination 
to introduce a foreigner to the real facts. During 
my first tour in Hungary I was predisposed to accept 
every word that fell from the lips of a Kossuthist as 
gospel, and it was only very slowly that the truth 
began to penetrate through the armour of suspicion 
which I donned whenever I met a non-Magyar. Indeed 
I look back now with amusement at the feelings of 
intense dislike and incredulity with which I first listened 
to a Slovak nationalist. I only mention this to show 
that I first visited Hungary as a strong partisan of 
the Magyars, and that it was only their repeated 
recourse to evasion and sophistry that shook my faith 
in the justice of their cause. 

“.On one occasion some Magyar acquaintances, 

realizing that I was not convinced by their arguments. 


43 



arranged for me a meeting with a professor, who 
they assured me, had made a special study of the 
questions in which I was interested, and who above 
all could say the last word on the important Law of 
Nationalities. I called next day full of expectation, 
and was received with habitual Magyar courtesy. 
Unfortunately the professor restricted himself to gene¬ 
ralities on the well-worn subjects of Liberty and 
Nationality, and it was only possible to bring the con¬ 
versation gradually round to the question at issue. 
He expressed great astonishment at the idea that the 
Law of Nationalities had remained a dead letter, 
admitted the possibility of occasional abuses such as 
were bound to occur even in the most civilized state, 
but assured me that with these trifling exceptions the 
law was loyally respected. (Unfortunately our mutual 
acquaintance had taken the line of admitting its non¬ 
execution and arguing the incompatibility of such a 
law with the Magyar hegemony.) “But,” 1 suggested, 
“the Law of Nationalities pledges the state to provide 
instruction in the mother-tongue, and yet, there is not 
a single Slovak or Ruthene gymnasium (High School) 
in Hungary.” “Oh, my dear Sir,” he protested, “I 
assure you that you are mistaken; there is no such 
provision as that in the Law of 1868.” Then 1 saw 
that it was useless to beat about the bush any longer, 
and boldly producing a pocket edition of the law I 
turned to paragraph 1 7, which contains the provision 
to which 1 had referred. The professor took the book 
and read the paragraph carefully through; he adjusted 
his glasses and skimmed it through again; then he 
turned to me and said: “Yes, 1 beg your pardon. Yes, 
you are perfectly right. I had forgotten.” 

What the investigation of the racial conditions in 
Hungary disclosed, created a great sensation throughout the 
English speaking world. It goes without saying that the 
Magyars, deprived of their artificial aura of championship 
of liberty and the rights of men, spared not in vituperation 
of the author of the book. The fact, however, remains. 


44 


that he was never successfully controverted, and his book 
is a mirror-reflexion of the conditions which they so care¬ 
fully, and for a time even successfully, concealed from the 
outside world. 

In one of the preceding chapters we stated that the 
beginning of the Magyar political state dates from the year 
1848. Conditions in Hungary between that year and 1867 
were somewhat unsettled, with Magyar nationalist idea 
steadily gaining at the expense of the other, non-Magyar 
nationalities. In 1867, a compromise was affected between 
the feudal interests of Hungary, mistakenly spoken of as the 
Hungarian nation, and the crown of Austria, the dynasty. 
The oppression which followed this compromise is treated 
in the brief of Ven. Svarc, before the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Relations, it being part of the Treaty of Peace 
with Germany, filed in answer to certain claims made by 
the representatives of Hungary in behalf of its integrity. 
We quote from pgs. 36 and 37, (Extracts from Hearings 
before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States 
Senate, Sixty-sixth Congress, First Session. Statements of 
Ven Svarc, Edward Vaczy and O. D. Koreff, pertaining to 
the Czecho-Slovak Republic in Relation to the Claims of 
Hungary. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 

1919): 

“In the year 1867 the Magyar State Idea, the 
driving force of Magyar imperialism was given impetus, 
when the Magyars were made supreme masters in 
Hungary over the non-Magyar nations, and from that 
time dates the oppression and persecution of the Slovaks, 
which grew as time went on and reached its climax 
during the great war. The severity of this oppression 
has no equal in the annals of European history. The 
Magyars were determined to wipe out the 3,000,000 
of Slovaks by completely Magyarizing them. The 
great exponent of the Magyar State Idea and of 
forceful Magyarization, Bela Gruenwald, put it thus: 

“ ‘The revival of national consciousness among the 
non-Magyar races constitutes a danger to the Magyar 
State. In Hungary there can be but Magyar culture. 


45 


It is impossible to gain by peaceful means the Slovaks 
for the Magyar State Idea. The only thing left us is 
to exterminate them completely. If the Magyars want 
to survive they must enrich their blood by assimilating 
the non-Magyar races.* 

“Pursuing this policy, the Magyars first of all 
laid their hands on the Slovak schools. In 1874 and 
1875 they closed the only three Slovak gymnasia, or 
higher schools. They also disbanded the Slovak scien¬ 
tific and literary society, the Slovenska Matica, con¬ 
fiscated its funds and buildings. This property was 
turned over to the Magyar government and later em¬ 
ployed in Magyarizing the Slovaks. 

“The Slovaks were deprived of all secondary 
schools and hence were compelled to seek education 
in Magyar schools. Bela Gruenwald describes the role 
of educational institutions thus: 

“The secondary school is like a huge machine; 
at one end Slovak youths are thrown in by the 
hundreds, and at the other we gather fullfledged 
Magyars.’ The Slovak students were prohibited from 
speaking the Slovak language, from reading Slovak 
or any other Slav books, and if they did not tamely 
submit to the process of Magyarization they were 
banished from the school. In this manner the Slovaks 
were deprived of a cultured class. In order to prevent 
the Slovaks from seeking education in other Slavic 
lands, a Slovak student could not receive his license 
to practice law or medicine if he did not have a 
diploma from a Magyar university.” 

On page 20 of the petition in behalf of Hungary we 
find the following paragraph which we feel obliged to 
reprint for the purpose of showing the falsity of Magyar 
claims: 

“The educational system of Hungary in 1914 is 
said to have rivaled the educational system of any 
country of the world. After centuries of hard struggle 


46 


with the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria, the Hungarians 
established their right to educate their children. There 
were 16,861 elementary schools and 34,5 74 teachers. 
Over 68 percent of the population above six years of 
age was able to read and write the Hungarian language.” 

We do not know what to think of a conceit which 
brags with 32 percent illiteracy as the highest achievement 
of an educational system. This line of argument is so crude 
that we consider it an insult to average intelligence to 
dwell on it at all and let the reader take it out in thinking. 
In the meantime we are returning to the brief submitted to 
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1919, which 
furnishes a somewhat different idea of the highly cultural 
achievements of the Magyars. 

The brief continues: 

‘‘To furnish some idea of the condition of schools 
in Slovakia we submit the following: 

‘‘In 1914 there were in Slovakia 448 Magyar 
kindergartens, but not a single Slovak kindergarten. 

‘‘Primary schools, 4,253 Magyar, 365 Slovak; but 
the Slovak primary schools were Slovak in name only, 
as the Magyar language was by law compelled to be 
taught from 17 to 24 hours per week, and the whole 
number of weekly school hours was but 26. 

‘‘There were 1 38 apprenticeship schools for artisans 
and merchants, ail Magyar, not a single Slovak one. 

‘‘There were 1 12 Magyar higher elementary schools 
not a single Slovak school. 

‘‘There were 27 Magyar normal or teachers’ 
schools, not one Slovak. 

‘‘There were 46 Magyar high schools, not a single 
Slovak high school; 8 Magyar high schools for girls, 
not a single Slovak high school for girls. 

‘‘There was no Slovak university, no Slovak tech¬ 
nical school, no Slovak law school, theological academy, 
or professional school; all were Magyar. 


47 


“The Slovak church, both Roman Catholic and 
Protestant, was in the hands of the Magyar Govern¬ 
ment and entirely employed for the purpose of Magyar- 
ization. When the Slovaks refused to recognize Magyar 
clergymen imposed upon them, they buried their dead 
without religious rites and left their children unbaptized. 

“At Cernova the Magyar Government insisted upon 
the dedication of a Slovak church by Magyar priests. 
The Slovak congregation refused to admit the Magyar 
priests. The government called out soldiers, though 
there had been no violence, who proceeded to shoot 
into the people, killing 1 5 parishioners, severly wounding 
many others, sending others to jail on the charge that 
they revolted against the government.” 

The cry of the oppressed Slovaks penetrated the 
Chinese wall which the Magyars had thrown around them 
in their efforts to cut them off from the rest of the civilized 
world. That outcry of despair reached the ear of Norway’s 
“grand old man,” Bjornstjcrne Bjornson, the poet, who 
subsequently refused to sit in the same Peace Conference in 
Munich with Count Albert Apponyi, the “black count” as 
the Slovaks called him—black on the inside, not the out¬ 
side—whom he charged with gross and brutal persecution 
of the Slovaks. It was shortly after the massacre of Cernova, 
(October 27, 1907) where during the consecration of a 
Slovak church a number of people were killed and wounded, 
because they resisted the consecration of their church by 
a Magyar priest. In his protest against Count Apponyi— 
a protest not against the person of the count, but against a 
representative of the feudal system of Hungary— Bjornson 
sets forth: 

“The Magyars are most zealous when it comes to 
talking of establishing peace. They are especially 
zealous advocates of humanity and righteousness. In 
spite of this they oppress three millions of Slovaks in 
their native land. They do not permit them to speak 
in the language of their souls; they overwhelm with 
ridicule their love for their historical traditions. They 
(the Magyars) close their museums, confiscate the 


48 



means wherewith they hold communion with their 
ancestors. In the Hungarian parliament they call them 
pigs, eject them from its halls and slander them in 
the papers. The man who, in his capacity as Minister 
of Education, directs these barbarous practices, is at 
the same time the foremost champion of Christianity. 
His name is Count Apponyi, and he alone can be 
heard at all the international peace conferences. 

“The oppression of the weaker nation by a more 
powerful is one of the most abominable and barbarous 
remnants of the Middle Ages. It is necessary in our 
days to create a public opinion against such policies. 
The present course of the Magyars against the Slavs 
is the greatest obstruction to progress I know of. The 
Magyars constitute a small island of seven millions in 
a sea of other races. Now they launched upon a career 
of suppressing those portions of- these races with 
whom they live in the same country, thinking that by 
this means they will strengthen themselves. They have 
entered into a conflict with those with whom they 
live in one political unit, thereby hoping to assure their 
own future. 

“Twelve dead, as many seriously and many more 
lightly wounded, and many made prisoners was the 
price of consecrating one church. Outside of Hungary 
such things are incomprehensible. Count Apponyi, 
who recently promised to explain many things which 
the outside world cannot understand, has, sad to say, 
no time for it now. He is so busy with his school 
laws, with suspending teachers who cannot speak 
Magyar, and appointing others who can speak this 
monstrous tongue, with the closing of schools where 
Magyar is not taught and establishing others in which 
only that language will be spoken, that he has abso¬ 
lutely no time. With book and lash, with laws and 

rifles they are introducing the Magyar tongue, which 

is said to be kin to the Turkish. The cause of this 

behavior of the Magyars is said to be very simple; 
there are not enough Magyars. The Magyars are in 


49 




the minority in their own country. Their increase is 
not very large; the Lord knows well why that is. So 
Magyars must be manufactured. Here we have the 
greatest Magyar industry, the greatest of its kind on 

Earth. To this greatest industry belongs this bloody 

baptism of Cernova. After this explanation we can 

understand it better. Magyar priests, Magyar police, 

Magyar bullets bless the church for the Slovaks under 
the auspices of their patron-Saint, the most noble pan- 
Magyar, Count Albert Apponyi.” 

In spite of this indictment by Bjornstjerne Bjornson 
and many other public spirited men of international renown 
the Magyars continued in their bloody practices at home 
while at the same time sending their “show-window liberals” 
all over the world, extolling a liberalism which was only 
a thin veneer over a brutal, Asiatic thick skin. 

The brief before the Senate Committee on Foreign 
Relations (pg. 37) continues: 

“The Magyars resorted to the practice of seizing 
Slovak children and sending them into strictly Magyar 
districts where they were placed in Magyar families. 
This official kidnapping at the instance of the Magyar 
Government finally had to be discontinued because 
public sentiment in Europe became so aroused against 
this crime that the Magyars were compelled to desist. 

“Slovak editors were constantly harrassed by fines 
and imprisonment, so that their existence became 
almost impossible. The Magyars purposed to efface 
the Slovak press. 

“The electoral laws and the system of elections 
were so manipulated by the Magyars that the Slovaks 
were deprived of rightful representation in the Par¬ 
liament. 

“The economic oppression of the Slovaks by the 
Magyars made it practically impossible for the Slovaks 
to engage in industry. Every industrial or economic 
undertaking required a Government license, and the 


50 




Slovaks were systematically refused such licenses, so 
that the Magyars would be able to hold everything 
in their own hands. As a result of all these persecutions 
in the last 40 years 739,565 Slovaks emigrated, most 
of them going to the United States. During the war 
the Magyars intensified their oppression and persecution 
of the Slovaks because of the hostile stand which the 
Slovaks took against them and the fact that Slovaks 
abroad had joined the Entente armies and that Slovak 
prisoners of war went over to the enemy.” 

There is much more that we could produce in our brief 
against the petition were it not for the fact that we feel 
we have submitted sufficient evidence to dislodge the claims 
of the petitioners which are as fraudulent as they are 
malicious. Instead we shall sum up, showing that the claims 
of the petitioners are not backed by anything but the 
sympathies of a certain group of radicals in this country, 
which in itself is not much of a recommendation if we 
consider that these same radicals squint with one eye at 
Lenin and Trotzky, while squinting the other at the feudal 
nobility of Hungary. We are not endeavoring to find the 
consistency of such an attitude. We know its cause. It is 
hostility toward everything that is Slav. But such an attitude, 
while to be expected in Hungary, from representatives of 
the feudal families, has no room in this country. 


51 


XL 


We have arrived at a point where we can sum up. The 
various claims of the petitioners in behalf of Hungary, or 
better said, in behalf of its feudal aristocrats, cannot stand 
up in the light of the revelations set forth in our brief. We 
feel to have proven beyond doubt that 

1. Hungary was as responsible for the World War as 
was Germany and Austria, owing to the position 
of influence enjoyed by the Magyar nobility which 
was the only real political factor in Hungary during 
the last seventy-five years of political development. 
How strongly the Magyars gravitated towards 
Berlin is proven not only by Bismarck and Liszt, 
but also by Kossuth himself, and Count Andrassy’s 
article at a time when German success seemed a 
possibility, puts the finishing touch on the sentimen¬ 
tal alignment of the Magyars during the World War. 

2. If the international bankers of the world are re¬ 
sponsible for the World War, then those of Hun¬ 
gary, representing the financial interests of the 
Magyar feudal nobility, are no less guilty than 
those of the other countries. 

3. If what the petitioners call the territorial mutilation 
and economic destruction benefits from twelve to 
fifteen millions of non-Magyars, while it leaves the 
status of six millions of Magyars unchanged, 
affecting only financially some eighty families of 
feudal lords, then it is not an obstacle which should 
be removed, but upheld with all might, because it 
is an arrangement which benefits the biggest num¬ 
ber of citizens while the hardships related—if 
existing—only affect eighty families of parasites 
who never in their worthless and useless lives did 
an honest day’s work. On the other hand, these 
eighty feudal families were the authors of injustice, 
persecutions, discrimination, of direct theft and 
robbery, of tax-dodging, intolerance and wrongs, 
that a return to these conditions would not be 


52 


advisable even though it were as possible as it is 
impossible. 

4. The proposition of whether there will be peace in 
Europe or not, unless Hungary is restored to her 
former territorial and economic rights, is a question 
which effects the neighbors of Hungary while it 
does not affect America at all. And these neighbors 
are not in the frame of mind to be bullied by 
ANY ONE for the sole benefit of these mentioned 
eighty families of feudal parasites. There will be 
peace in Europe when all nations affected by after¬ 
war conditions will get to work and honestly strive 
to succeed by their own efforts and not by the 
sweat of others of whom they are permitted to 
take advantage. There are no complaints heard 
from the Serbs and Croats, nor from the Rumanians 
or Slovaks, but there are complaints from the 
representatives of the Magyar feudal lords. Why 
is that? Because the other nationalities are incor¬ 
porated in homogenous bodies and are working 
out their own salvation as well as they can, while 
the Magyar feudal lords, deprived of the opportun¬ 
ity to exploit these non-Magyar races, are now 
thrown upon their own resources. Until they will 
learn to work for themselves instead of yearning 
after the exploitation of others, until then they will 
find themselves in dangerous positions which even¬ 
tually will result in conflicts with their neighbors, and 
their eventual complete annihilation. The peace of 
Europe, therefore, rests more on their own good 
behavior than on anything else, while any attempt 
on their part to upset that peace is equivalent to 
suicide. Judging from their lusty cries, they do 
not seem inclined to committing suicide, therefore 
the threat of danger to the peace of Europe is an 
awkward bluff. 

5. The American people and Christian America will 
do well to remember one thing; historic rights or 
any other rights of nations are only valid as long 

53 


as they do not interfere with the natural rights of 
others. For the Magyar feudal lords to consider the 
exploitation of the non-Magyar races as their right 
is one thing; for these non-Magyar races to resent 
such exploitation is another thing. And where 
these two rights conflict the largest number so 
affected deserves the most consideration. But where 
Magyar feudal aristocrats call Christian America 
to their assistance to bring back conditions which 
led up directly to the World War, we only point 
back to the use these same nobles made of the 
various churches of their own country, and caution 
America’s various denominations to be careful 
upon whom they are urged to bestow their sympa¬ 
thies. Hungary has obtained justice. The nation¬ 
alities who could not live with the Magyars, be¬ 
cause the latter prevented peaceful cooperation, are 
now living happily without them. The conditions 
of the Magyar peasant have not changed essentially 
since the war. There are more taxes, perhaps. 
But that condition is general all over Europe, and 
even in this country. The industrial wage earner’s 
condition has not changed very much. The only 
ones affected are the barons, counts, and princes; 
the parasites who always lived from the sweat of the 
under-dog, which in this instance were the sub¬ 
jugated nationalities. Since this condition has 
changed they have lost much of their prestige and 
also much of their incomes. But we cannot see any 
obligation on the part of the American people and 
Christian America to help to restore them. Least 
of all can we see any reason why, in this age of 
progressing democracy, there should be so much 
compunction over the financial losses of aristocratic, 
parasites when the welfare of three nations, com¬ 
prising thirty-eight millions of people is at stake? 


Having presented the case of the Slovaks as affected 
by the petition, we cannot but thank the petitioners for a 
quotation which they published on the fly-leaf of their 


54 


petition. We promised to return to it, and in going over 
the case of the Slovaks, of their suffering under the yoke 
of the Magyar nobles, impoverished by a system more akin 
to robbery than to any lawful procedure, we repeat with 
President Harding: 

“How can humanity justify or God forgive? 
Human hate demands no such toll; ambition and 
greed must be denied it. If misunderstanding must 
take the blame, then let us banish it, and let under¬ 
standing rule and good-will regnant everywhere. All 
of us demand liberty and justice. There cannot be one 
without the other, and they must be held the un¬ 
questioned possession of all peoples. Inherent rights 
are of God, and the tragedies of the world originate 
in their denial. The world today is infringing their 
enjoyment by arming to defend or deny, when simple 
sanity calls for their recognition through common 
understanding.” 

While not written with a view to the conditions of the 
Slovaks under Magyar rule, this quotation fits like a glove. 
Could really humanity justify or God forgive a forcible 
return to the old conditions, if such were possible? NO! 
Human hate demands no such toll, and greed and ambition 
must be denied it. There is no cause for hating the former 
subject races of Hungary to such a degree as to demand 
it, and the greed of the feudal nobles, and their morbid 
ambition must be denied it, if not in a peaceful rebuke 
from this country, then in a bloody war from their neighbors. 
All of us demand liberty and justice, but the Magyar feudal 
lords demand it only for themselves. The other, non-Magyar 
races never had either one or the other. Inherent rights are 
of God, and the tragedies of the world originate in their 
denial. These inherent rights of the non-Magyar nationalities 
cannot be subordinated to the rights of the Magyar feudal 
nobility. If theirs are of God, the rights of the Magyar 
feudal lords are of the opposite force. 

In closing we wish to stress that we made this reply 
only with great reluctance. We consider the question of 

55 




Magyar territorial integrity settled. We would not have 
come again before the American people, had it not been 
for the fact that every time the representatives of Magyar 
feudalism appear with the renewal of their claims, they sub¬ 
mit such coarse misrepresentations that their ignoring in¬ 
volves the danger of suspicion that they are justified. It 
was only for the purpose of refuting the misstatements of 
the petitioners that we answered their claims. The fate of 
their petition does not disturb us. The truth alone can 
triumph. A lie, no matter how finely spun, will always 
come out. The non-Magyars of former Hungary are free 
and happy, and well able to defend to the last drop of 
blood that for which they had fought so gallantly in the past. 

The Slovak League of America of which the Association 
of Slovak Newspapermen of America is an affiliated part, 
through its officers, pledges its word of honor that the 
claims and proofs, set forth in the following brief are true 
and correct to its best knowledge and belief. 



Secretary 

Pittsburgh, Pa., October, 1923. 


THE BOSAK PRESS SCRANTON, PA. 



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